Ladysmith

Ladysmith

by Giles Foden (Author)

Synopsis

The year is 1899, and Boer forces have surrounded the small South African town. As shells and shrapnel rain down, British soldiers and townsfolk dig themselves in. Waiting for rescue, they try to keep up their spirits with parties and cricket matches. But General Buller's relief column can't break through. All that comes is danger, disease and starvation. Foden's spellbinding narrative introduces a cast of characters ranging from Irish Republican renegades to London literary editors to some of the most famous faces of the twentieth century. And at the centre is young Bella Kiernan, for whom the long siege represents an unexpected freedom: a chance to break old loyalties and establish new loves. Inspired by the letters of the author's great-grandfather, a British trooper, this is a powerful fictional recreation of the first modern war. With its internment camps, war-correspondents and cine-cameras, the siege and its aftermath sowed the seeds of conflicts to come.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 04 Sep 2000

ISBN 10: 0571203663
ISBN 13: 9780571203666

Media Reviews
Captivating.... A highly accomplished historical novel. - The Washington Post Skillful.... Precise [and] affirming.... Foden creates a complex mosaic. - Dallas Morning News Ladysmith is a haunting, disturbing novel-not only about how things were in a long-forgotten war, but how that war made us what we are. -The Independent
Author Bio
Giles Foden was born in 1967 and spent his youth in Africa. Between 1990 and 2006 he worked as a journalist on the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian. In 1998 he published The Last King of Scotland, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award and was later made into a feature film. The author of three other novels and also a work of narrative non-fiction, he was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2007. He lives in Norfolk.